Ampelisca brevicornis (Costa, 1853)

Azman, B. A. R. & Othman, B. H. R., 2013, Shallow water marine gammaridean amphipods of Pulau Tioman, Malaysia, with the description of a new species, ZooKeys 335, pp. 1-31 : 3-4

Ampelisca brevicornis (Costa, 1853) Figure 2

Araneops brevicornis Synonymy: Costa, 1853: 171.

Ampelisca brevicornis (Costa, 1853): Chevreux and Fage 1925: 77-79; Schellenberg 1925: 130-133; Pirlot 1936: 277-278; Schellenberg 1942: 146-147; Reid 1951: 204- 210; Nagata 1959: 265-266; Nagata 1965a: 150-151; Imbach 1967: 55-57, pl. 3; Kaim-Malka 1969: 928-932, 934, 953-958; Karaman 1975: 7-12; Rabindranath 1975: 257-261; Lincoln 1979: 112-113; Ledoyer 1982b: 56, 58-59; Hirayama 1991: 86. Ampelisca sp. cf. brevicornis (Costa, 1853).

Ampelisca laevigata Liljeborg, 1856: Sars 1895: 169-170, pl. 59.

Material.

5 specimens, TIO-15, Renggis, Pulau Tioman, 2°48'35"N, 104°8'6"E, washing mix sea grasses, Azman, B.A.R., Rayida, J., 15 July 1999.

Remarks.

Ampelisca brevicornis is known to be a cosmopolitan species and has been collected from the soft substrata and water column from the littoral zone to the continental shelf from the waters of the world except for boreal areas ( Rabindranath 1975; Lincoln 1979; Hirayama 1983). Ampelicsa brevicornis was first recorded from the Mediterranean Sea ( Costa 1853) by the name Araneops brevicornis ; it occurs in waters of variable temperatures from north east Atlantic ( Schellenberg 1925), south and west Norway ( Sars 1895), Atlantic coast of Europe ( Lincoln 1979), north Africa ( Kaim-Malka 1969; Reid 1951), Indian Ocean ( Rabindranath 1975), Japan ( Nagata 1965a; Hirayama 1991), Indonesian archipelago ( Pirlot 1936) as well as the neighbouring waters of Vietnam ( Imbach 1967). Although several morphological variations in antennae, pleonal epimera and urosome are reported between European ( Schellenberg 1925) and African specimens ( Reid 1951), the present specimens agree in detail with descriptions by Imbach (1967) and Nagata (1959). Imbach (1967) discussed some of the variations concerning this particular species and refuted the idea of naming the existing ecophenotypes reported by Schellenberg (1925), Reid (1951), Dahl (1945) and Pirlot (1936) as a subspecies due to their insignificant distinctions.

Taking into consideration that Ampelicsa brevicornis is one of the most popular inhabitants on a littoral sea bottom and widely distributed on the sea floor of the east coast (South China Sea) and the west coast (Straits of Malacca) of Peninsular Malaysia, and numerous specimens have been meticulously examined, misidentification can be confidently ruled out. The specimens at hand show only minor disparities from Imbach’s by having a broader propodus of pereopod 7, so it is clearly satisfactory to identify the specimens as Ampelicsa brevicornis .